Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Quantitative studies of racial identification have commonly focused on the identification choices of children and adolescents living in the parental home. Less is known about the racial self-identification choices that individuals make as they develop into independent young adults. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I compare the racial self-identification of respondents when they were aged 18-23 to their biological parents' racial identification. Results suggest unexpected effects of individual development-related and socioeconomic characteristics. Measures of greater independence from parents and communities of adolescent development were associated with both greater and weaker consistency between self-identification and parental identification, and measures of parental socioeconomic status were associated with weaker consistency. The results across racial parentage groups conform to historical norms for Whites, Blacks, and American Indians, while the results for biracial respondents, Asians, and Hispanics are less clearly guided by these norms.

Bibliography Citation

Gullickson, Aaron. "The Racial Identification of Young Adults in a Racially Complex Society." Emerging Adulthood published online (5 August 2018): DOI: 10.1177/2167696818790306.

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Marital status is a robust predictor of alcohol consumption in young adulthood; however, the extent to which observed associations are due to socialization or selection processes is unclear. The current study examined associations between marital status and alcohol use, assessed in a sample of 5,150 young adults (ages 18–30) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. A longitudinal sibling-comparison design controlled for family-level environmental and genetic selection factors and for an individual’s premarital trajectory of alcohol use. Nested model comparisons tested whether gender and age moderated the effects of marriage and divorce. Controlling for selection factors, the transition into marriage predicted decreases in alcohol consumption, and this effect was consistent across gender and age. Divorce predicted increased consumption, particularly for men. Findings support a causal relationship between changes in marital status and alcohol use, rather than an association due to selection factors and suggest gender-specific changes in alcohol use following divorce.

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Despite the growing prevalence of cohabitation, past attempts to identify mental health outcomes from cohabitation do not differentiate by cohabitation duration. The current study investigated the mental health implications from long-term cohabitation, defined as those lasting more than 3 years. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I compared the average individual mental health scores between time spent single, or time spent in a short-term cohabitation, and time spent in a long-term union. Results indicated that externalizing distress, defined as heavy episodic drinking, was lower during time spent in a long-term cohabitation than it was during time spent single. Unexpectedly, the average emotional distress rates were greater during time spent in a long-term cohabitation than they were during time spent single; men appeared to be driving that effect. Overall, long-term cohabitation did not provide an additional mental health benefit above and beyond short-term cohabitation.

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While many have studied the antecedents of homelessness and health status among the actively homeless, no studies have evaluated the long-term health outcomes of formerly homeless adolescents and young adults. In this article, we examine the prospective association of early homeless experience and health outcomes after homelessness has subsided and whether factors that impede successful life course transitions following homeless experiences (e.g., low education attainment, depressive symptoms) mediate these associations. Among 4,651 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth–Child Study participants, formerly homeless adolescents and young adults (aged 15–25) were at greater risk of developing asthma, health-limiting conditions (HLCs), and fair/poor self-rated health over 8 years of follow-up, particularly among females. Factors that disrupt life course transitions mediated associations for asthma and HLCs. Using 20 years of life course information, this study demonstrates the enduring health risks for adolescents and young adults with homeless experience as they age.